Michael Lissack Making Government Work
Generally, no social task should be assigned to an institution that is larger than necessary to do the job. What can be done by families should not be assigned to an intermediate group-school, etc. What can be done at the local level should not be passed on to the state or federal level, and so on. There are, of course, plenty of urgent tasks-that do require national and even international action. But to remove tasks to higher levels than is necessary weakens the constituent communities. If local people are deeply involved in a process, if they help to organize it, and if they have a perceived stake, espe- cially an economic stake, in the outcome, then the process often has a better chance of success than if it is imposed by a distant bureaucracy or a powerful exploiter. This principle holds for duties of attending to the sick, troubled, delinquent, homeless, and new immigrants; and for public safety, public health and protection of the environment-from a neighborhood crimewatch to CPR to sorting the garbage. The government should step in only to the extent that other social subsystems fail, rather than seek to replace them. Federalism is an age-old device for keeping the proper balance between big and small. Big in some things, small in others. It is never easy, because it means allowing the small to be independent while still being part of the larger whole, to be different but part of the same. Federalism is, therefore, fraught with difficulty because it is trying to combine those two opposites, to manage the paradox. Twin citizenship makes it possible. If there is the sense of belonging to something bigger as well as to our own smaller unit, we can see the sense in accepting some restrictions on our local independence, if it helps the larger whole. Sovereignty is not ceded but shared. The larger unit is not 'them' but-also 'us'. Successful economic revitalization is hard to carry out or even to com- prehend on a national scale. Many of those concerned about the lagging American economy have urged the federal government to adopt an explicit industrial policy. Proponents usually envision a huge federal bank with a board allocating funds to industries and areas. Such grandiose notions founder on closer examination, however, in part because of the sheer size
256
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online